Dear Mr. Smith
It is a pleasure to inform you that the town council of our great Strangetown has decided to assign the house on 57 Road To Nowhere to you and any other members of your household. The house is in need of some repairs, but a mysterious benefactor donated a hefty sum to the town's treasury. Thus, the town council grants you total freedom in the refurbishing of the lot. You are free to redecorate and change the layout of the inside, nevertheless the outside shell must remain. Further stories can be added at your discretion. Do note that you are free to repaint the exterior.
We hope you the best for the rest of your life here in Strangetown.

Best regards,
Town Council of Strangetown

The new Smith residence

For the final round of this contest, we had an unlimited budget. And what do I do with an unlimited budget? I go overboard with the landscaping, that's for sure! In fact, if the lot was only a shell and the outside, it would cost 130K! Then again, the only thing PT9 cares more about than his lawn is his family, so he would surely go to the Moon and back (maybe he's even been there before) to have a great backyard. Outside, the lot has a Mediterranean-ish feel. With a total of 4 doors to the outside, the main door is the one on the left of the building - and that is the one used by the mailman, as I wished. The two back doors are only accessible through the gated backyard, though. Inside, my original plan was to decorate it in a typical Suburban family likes the Smiths always seemed to me, but I guess inspired by @iCad 's idea to recreate Strangetown in a 50's setting, I went for a mid-century modern decoration instead. Since PT9 is alien, I though I could give them access to a piece of modern tech here and there, hence the flat screen and the computer.
The house has wood tones throughout, with plenty of splashes of green, Jenny's favourite colour. In the living room, there are enough seats for everyone to watch TV, read a book or listen to music. Jill has left some of her toys there, though. Someone better clean that up before guests arrive. They have a spacious bathroom downstairs, but it doesn't feel like it is empty. Upstairs, both kids have their own room and the parents have their ensuite bathroom, as requested (the bathtub is functional, it was tested). Jill's room has a maritime theme. And while I know one judge mentioned they didn't feel like Johnny was a jock, I have to disagree. His bio states that he would like to arrive in a cool sports car, he has 7 body points and he has almost max interest in sports. So, his room has a massive pop-art painting and sports deco, like a rugby helmet and a jersey. Again, green.
The four-click high level between the first floor and the roof allowed me to build an attic, where they have some desks, bookcases, armchairs and an easel, as well as some MALM dressers to mimic cardboxes (thanks @Zarathustra!). Jill isn't supposed to go there, her father thinks the ladder is dangerous, but she sneaks in anyway when he's not looking.
This house has a burglar and fire alarm, so it meets Strangetown's safety standards, as well as a phone, a bin on every level except the attic and items for every skill. The aquarium under the stairs is merely decorative. The off-grid chess table works and I found no issues with the attic, other than carefully placing items as to not have them poke through the roof. And Johnny might not yet be the hero he dreams of, but at least he can drive a 1984 Pontiac Trans-Am and a 1967 Corvette. Pretty cool.

Here are the photos the town council took during their inspection of the lot:

This is the actual front when you load the lot, but for playing purposes the front is the picture not on the spoiler.
The inside decorations cost about as much as the outside decorations. Granted, there are two cars, but even so...
The only thing PT9 cares about more than his lawn is his family. Looking at how well he cares for his lawn, I'd say his family is pretty lucky.
Now let's go inside:
Jill's room:
Johnny's room:
The parents' room:
The attic:
And finally, the original 57 Road To Nowhere lot. Pretty depressing, if you ask me.

I think that's it for this lot. I loved this contest, it really helped me improve my building skills. Also, it finally made me go and grab a Live Camera mod. The camera is so much better now.

EDIT: Two things I forgot to say. First, sorry for the underside texture of the roof, but AFAIK, that can't be helped. The default replacement I had even made it worse. Secondly, like I said in a later post, chairs are placed off-grid to show how the house would look in a lived-in situation. They were put in the correct position after screenshot taking.

The stairs are modular stairs. And yes, there's only a 3-tile gap above them, not 4 tiles like they normally have. I did it and it works

I will take the half point hit (or even one full point one, depends) .

My little niece was flew by helicopter to hospital this morning , after she hit her head to the dock of our cabin when she jumped to swim. Gladly her bigbrother was allready at the sea, so he helped her out of the water and alarmed us right away.

very lovely entries <3 I was lazy and went for Spectre/Nigmos lot, as no dormers there

~~~~Call me Ellu ~~~

Past the point of no return,
No going back now,
Our passionplay is now begun.
Past thought of right or wrong, final question, how long have we wait before we're one?
~Andrew Loyd Webber (Phantom Of The Opera)

Ellu, hope she's alright!
Also, I forgot to say that in the photos I used setquartertileplacement to show how the chairs would look in a lived-in situation, but obviously I placed them correctly after taking the screenshots.

Wow! Talk about last minute lol, but I got my entry done
What follows is an excerpt from the latest edition of The Strangetown Inquirer.

Reporter Crystal Vu met up with Strangetown's newest resident, Ajay Loner, who recently finished remodeling 91 Road to Nowhere. Here, he plans to open Strangetown's first ever bakery. Mr. Loner allowed us to take a tour of his lot.

The property was pretty barren before Mr. Loner got his hands on the deed. Only lots of sand and an abandoned shack.

The new and improved lot features one and a half bathrooms, a combined kitchen-living room-dining room space, a master bedroom, and a covered back patio. Mr. Loner also commissioned the building of a hot spring in his own backyard!

The bakery itself is currently very basic. But, as Mr. Loner says, "You've got to start somewhere. I have plans for expansion once the bakery is up and running properly." When I asked him why he decided to open a bakery, Loner stated that "[his] interest in food is quite high."

The customer bathroom is quite clean and modern.

The living space is small, but very cosy. "I was inspired by those mountain cabins you can rent in places like Three Lakes," Mr. Loner says. "Those always exuded such a masculine vibe to me, and I put my own spin on it while considering this remodeling job."

"I've always had a big interest in the supernatural," says Mr. Loner about the movie posters in his bedroom. "I'm also a big culture and entertainment aficionado, so having those movie posters there inspires me so much. I also enjoy painting when I have a free moment. I take my favourite easel everywhere."

The master bathroom is clean in its lines, rustic and yet modern at the same time.

When he isn't painting, baking, or playing his guitar ("My interests in culture and entertainment manifest itself in many ways"), Loner can be found on his front porch or in his yard. "I used to love counting the grains of sand in my garden, but I barely have the time now with this new bakery!"

The back patio is another of Mr. Loner's favourite places. "I love to have breakfast here in the morning, before it gets really hot. I also enjoy playing my guitar here. For some reason, the acoustics here are fantastic!"

We wish Mr. Loner the best with this new business venture! 'Taste of Belgium' Bakery opens next week.

I had a great time participating in the contest! Thanks Jo for organizing it, the judges for - well, judging lol, and the other contestants for participating

@joandsarah77, just to let you know that it'll probably be Sunday (UK time) when my entry gets posted. I was sick earlier this week, and am now pulling an all-nighter at work. Once that finishes I expect to sleep most of Saturday, but I'm about two-thirds done so hopefully one more session over the weekend will get it finished.

The Singles girls gathered around to discuss their windfall and discuss what they should spend the money on, over and above putting a roof over their heads.

"A pool," voted Erin.

"A pool... and maybe a hot tub so we can throw really good pool parties," added Chloe. "It'll be a great way to get to know everybody in town again."

"A pool... and a barbecue," said Lola. "All those thousands of people Chloe's going to invite to our parties are going to need to be fed."

"A pony," said Kristen, daring to be different.

Unfortunately she couldn't decide which horse she wanted to buy. So she bought five. Hey, unlimited budget!

Price

Entire lot:

Floor plans:

Stable floor plans:

Original house:

(From the Sims Wiki, as I moved everybody out of their houses on day one, and most of the outside stuff for that lot ended up in the General's inventory.)

Guided tour:

Kristen loves sport. Any sport. She swims, she cycles, she plays cricket, she jogs... but her special love is for riding. She's very glad that they could afford a house with enough room for a stable and paddock, and now she plans to school her new horses so she can fulfil her long standing ambition to become a top show jumper.

(Well, she thinks it's a long standing ambition anyway. If not, maybe it's something the aliens programmed into her. If it is, she's willing to play along.)

Mostly it's Kristen who rides the horses, but whenever the others are interested she'll put them up on the quieter and more well mannered mounts and take them for a hack along the Road to Nowhere.

The horses mostly live outside, but there's a stable with a couple of looseboxes for when Kristen wants to keep them in or keep them from rolling the instant she's finished grooming them. Greys are particularly bad about doing that.

Chloe got her hot tub and Lola got her barbecue. They all got their pool, and a nice sunny area where they can laze about on hot days.

And whether they're coming in from the pool or the ponies, there's a shower room just inside the house to wash the dirt and sweat off.

Other than the shower room and the littlest room, the ground floor of their house is mostly open plan. There's a breakfast bar for eating on the run, and a dining area for more leisurely and social meals.

The computer is Lola's, though she lets the others use it when she's not busy reading and writing political blogs. The globe is Kristen's, so she can check where all those places that she'll one day compete in horse shows are located on the map.

Lola keeps all the political biographies she loves to read and the others say are boring upstairs in her room. If the others are out and about she'll often come up here to sit and read. She has ambitions to stand for election to the Strangetown Town Council, and sometimes tries out speeches in front of her mirror.

Chloe is an unabashed romantic. Hopefully all that pink won't put the guys off, but she's well prepared with a loveseat as well as a double bed. She also has a telephone in her room, so that she can phone up all her old/new friends and chat.

Erin likes to think that she's a little mystical, maybe even psychic. She's fascinated by Native American customs and has a collection of windcatchers. Sadly, her Tarot deck got lost when the aliens took them. She knows she used to have one, because she did a little retrocognition with her crystal ball.

With Kristen it's still all about the horses. She has the end room, which allows her to slip down the fire escape and get to the paddock very easily. Though she does keep a couple of cricket bats handy, just in case she finds anybody else locally who knows how to play the game.

There's a bathroom at either end of the landing, so generally they pair up and share one. Unless someone's having a really long bubble bath and hogging the room, in which case it's first come first served for the other bathroom. The larger of the two bathrooms is next to Chloe's room, and she may have had some influence in the pink theme. She also thinks you can never have enough toilet paper.

The other bathroom is next to Kristen's room, and is decorated in blue.

NOTE: The sinks in both of these bathrooms, as well as the small toilet downstairs, are deco objects and do not block Sims paths nor prevent them from getting into a bath.

On starting work on 57 Road to Nowhere for the Singles girls, I couldn't help noticing a very obvious tear in the Simearth's crust between their lot and the Grunts next door. The two lots were adjacent to each other and some of the terrain in the Grunts' lot (No. 51) was slightly higher than the adjacent terrain at number 57, resulting in "daylight" being visible through the tear. My first thought was to try to disguise/hide the tear with a hedge or boundary wall. But then I decided that I wanted another copy of 57 Road to Nowhere to use as a barracks for the military a little further along the road, so yesterday I installed Jawusa's new empty Strangetown to copy the house from there. I was surprised to see that, in jawusa's empty version, there is a one-square-wide space between numbers 51 and 57. And, as a result there is no tear in the landscape. Now my normal Strangetown -- the populated one where I'm building is Tarlia's, and it has the two lots (numbers 51 and 57) touching. Whereas in Jawusa's empty version there is a one-square-wide gap between them. So did Tarlia move the two lots together, or did Jawusa move them apart? I've never played the original Maxis Strangetown -- I'd replaced it with Tarlia's version before I started to play it. Now everybody here is obviously playing Strangetown for this contest (or at least we're all building there. So can I ask you ask you all to check in your game if the two lots (51 [The Grunts] and 57 Road to Nowhere) touch or whether there's a space between them? And which version do you have? Maxis original version or Tarlia's cleaned-up version? And, if they touch, can you see a tear in the terrain between them?

In my live game, I have now moved the Grunts' house 1 square further out of town to match its position in Jawusa's version, and the tear is no longer visible. I actually preferred the arrangement with the houses closer together, but not if it means a tear in the landscape. (I think originally, in the "good old days" as General Grunt calls them, when the military ran all of Strangetown, there was some sort of parade ground on the land between the two barracks buildings.)

As for my play-along entry, I don't know. In the last few days my internet connection has become very unreliable, not working more often than it works. Our ISP has promised us a new router in the next few days, but I don't know when that will arrive. Moreover Real Life commitments are looming large, with my sister and her husband coming to visit, and I don't know how long they'll be staying. (No one in my family knows that I play The Sims at all!) I might manage some sort of "quickie" entry, with the house fairly basically furnished. (I now want the Singles living in that house for my game anyway.) If I don't make it, and the contest thread is closed by the time I'm ready, I think I'll post the entry in the Lots and Housing picture thread.

For the longer term I've added that third barracks-style house a little further along the road and numbered in 43. That will become a barracks for the half dozen or so townie soldiers already living in and around Strangetown. (I've checked in SimPE, and quite a few of the townies are in the military career.) I might even add a fourth such building to keep them in symmetrical pairs.

@Yvelotic2001 , may I ask where you got that loft ladder in your picture? At the moment I always use a rope ladder that came with Phaenoh's playground set, and a wooden ladder would be far more likely.

On starting work on 57 Road to Nowhere for the Singles girls, I couldn't help noticing a very obvious tear in the Simearth's crust between their lot and the Grunts next door.

Fixing this has gotten to be so automatic with me that I've forgotten that I even do it. I just go to Neighborhood View, pick up one of the two "barracks" lots, and move it to various spots along that side of the street in the immediate area - I use the lot as a "stamp" to flatten the terrain along the road. This always fixes the problem for me.

I've been using Tarlia's templates. I recently replaced the base neighborhood version of Strangetown with this fixed version by Dorsal Axe. I don't recall whether Dorsal Axe's version had that rip in the fabric of the universe or not. I've been playing it for awhile and if the problem was there, I may have done my usual thing and automatically fixed it without remembering that I did it.

On starting work on 57 Road to Nowhere for the Singles girls, I couldn't help noticing a very obvious tear in the Simearth's crust between their lot and the Grunts next door. The two lots were adjacent to each other and some of the terrain in the Grunts' lot (No. 51) was slightly higher than the adjacent terrain at number 57, resulting in "daylight" being visible through the tear.

As far as I know I have the original maxis version of the hood. And the lots are adjacent, but they also have flat edges between them so no tear on my end.

This is really just a play along entry - but I had fun. I decided to make over the starter and try my hand at a smaller lot again.

The Curious boys felt that they were on the losing side - how are all of them going to fit into a starter house? They are scientists, so they came up with a plan, Pascal reminding his brothers that the house has to be fit for a child as well. They decided that a nice kitchen is important, because not only does it fit a family home, they are scientists, they cook. Each brother will have his own quarters on a floor and they will share the first floor. Each of them has a brand new telescope too.

The kitchen
Bathroom close to kitchen
Dining and Living
Pascal floor
Bedroom
Nursery
Containers to file conspiracy theories in
and filing cabinets for those outside as well:
Vidcund's floor:
Bedroom (and African violets)
Living area (and violets)
Lazlo's floor:
He keeps a phone next to his bed as well - one never knows when one may wake up and feels the need to call a psychic.
Outside
Getting something for the kid in the garden - never too early. Some wildflowers here and there, a tree or three and there are some miniature fruit trees in the front.

I once again am so sorry this took so long, but it had to be this way. Thanks for the wishes, Jenny is better, still very tired little girl, but will be getting home at end of the week.

I do not know the name of the lot, as my game is finnish, I took the lot from Jawusa's empty Strangetown and it has the finn name (the real occupied Specter lot is still there and right next to this makeover lot) .

I build it to look like an apartment, but is is residential, I used dorm rooms like pre AL apartments I used to do.

I did add some staging as decorative flowerboxes (in original house, the foundation is bigger than shell of the house, hence all the columns).
In Chloes flat, the phone in the bathtub is for decorative purpose only. (Well what if she remembers something very interesting about last night's party when taking a bubblebath?? Naturally she has to ring to her friends instantly!! )
In Erin's flat, there is tons of candles, but also there are lots of sprinklers (NOT in the shower, I assume there is enough water without sprinkler).
Kristen's flat is very minimally decorated, on purpose, as she isn't going to live there for long (so she thinks).
The armchair outside was originally explained in my story, but as now the story shall go, in nutshell ,girls wondered why it was there, some greepy old lady came every night and sat there till sunrise.. ehh.. weird.
All kitchens have firealarms ,trash compactor or bin, burglar alarms near the unit door, phone/several phones per unit , and also trash cute in the hall area near the elevator and stairs.

Thanks to the 3 extra pics per added floor, I have 4 playable added floors (not counting the toppest floor, as it is only a roof piece), making it 12 pics, plus the 12 originally mentioned, I used 19 to girls apartments and 5 outside pics to make it total 24.

Mandatory images

price

foundation, showing whole lot

1st floor

2nd floor

3th floor

4th floor

5th floor

roof

original lot, not showing the roof so the foundation can be seen

Rest of the images.

Fist floor, Lola's apartment

second floor, Kristen's apartment

third floor, Chloe's apartment

fourth floor, Erin's apartment

5 remaining images, one showing part of the stageing I did for plantboxpurposes

Screenshots

~~~~Call me Ellu ~~~

Past the point of no return,
No going back now,
Our passionplay is now begun.
Past thought of right or wrong, final question, how long have we wait before we're one?
~Andrew Loyd Webber (Phantom Of The Opera)

Oh man...I completely forgot about this! In the downtime after the third round, I had to start working on syllabi for my fall classes, and yeah...absentminded professor time. I was just assigned another section yesterday and classes start next week, so....I don't think I'm going to have time to build the last entry. I'm really sorry Jo!

Just to let you know I'm still here. Real World issues have been taking up almost all my time lately, but I am at last beginning to find a little time for Simming again. I spent about an hour and a half tonight working on the Singles house (57 Road to Nowhere). I reckon the exterior is now about finished, and I hope I've done the garden in a way the Curious girls will like. Here (in case the contest thread closes before I can finish it) is an in-game picture of the house, looking out of "town" along the Road to Nowhere:

I reckon building and landscaping work is now complete, and it's just a case of interior decorating and furnishing, moving them in, taking the pictures and writing up the post. I do hope I can manage that before the thread completely closes. Whatever happens, I undoubtedly shall finish the house sometime, because I'm playing this in my "live" Strangetown, and the Singles really need the house to live in!

As you can see, I've added an attic so those windows in the roof actually provide light to a usable room. It changes the roofline slightly, but I think it's actually more interesting. On the first floor I have shamelessly copied the arrangement of the 4 bedrooms from muridae's post (#561): I simply couldn't think how to get a double bed into each of 4 bedrooms till I saw her/his entry. On the ground floor I'm really just sticking to the Maxis layout, slightly altered for the changed position of the stairs. I won't be doing anything too ambitious with the furnishing or decorating -- I really want to just get this house finished and the girls moved in.

Jo, I know it was very late, but could you still add my round 3 entry (post #542) to the play-along table? Also, I may have missed them, but did you make any comments on the round 2 play-alongs? I didn't read the thread posts for a couple of weeks, and, even though I tried to catch up, I may have missed your comments. And I really would appreciate any comments (including adverse ones) from anyone on any of my play-along entries.

Thanks Jo for organising this contest, and for putting up with my tardiness.